Just Ride
by nothing-chan
Summary: "Every night I used to pray that I'd find my people, and finally I did, on the open road. We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art. Live fast. Die young. Be wild. And have fun. I believe in the country America used to be. I believe in the person I want to become. I believe in the freedom of the open road."
1. Chapter 1

"_Every night I used to pray that I'd find my people, and finally I did, on the open road._

_We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore, except to make our lives into a work of art."_

* * *

The landscape was an impressionist painting of American nothingness.

It had been hours since Arthur had last seen a fire hydrant; a car not manufactured decades ago, a paved road. The dust enveloped his view of burnt out barns and gelatinous farm animals, lifting their heads to watch the car he sat in rumble by, oscillating over the rocks and plastic bottles making up their expressway.

Arthur pressed his fingers to the cold window, iced from stale air conditioning stuffing up his nostrils, reaching out to touch the velvet noses of cows with watering eyes and blunt teeth. His hands glided over the smoothness as it passed over a sign prohibiting hunting, orange and manmade against the grassy fields.

"I think we'll be there soon Arthur, are you excited?" His mother asked from in front of him, face glued to the camera capturing blurred, amateur shots of the fast moving country.

"Very," he said, trying to make it the least sarcastic laden as possible, failing miserably, receiving only a soft tongue click from the older woman.

Sure enough, a house without a silo appeared, the first in decades, worn blue shutters barely on their hinges, paint peeling in the dull sunlight. More sprung out of the ground, separated by great expanses of rolling land and skittering prairies, but marking civilization nonetheless, civilization that most likely had not ever seen color television.

It was rude to stereotype, but when the only thing you had seen for miles on end were flimsy telephone wires that seemed to topple every time you drove past, it was hard for Arthur not to make impolite assumptions.

"Do they even have internet out here?" Arthur wondered aloud, stumping his parents in the front seat as they remained silent in thought.

"Who needs internet when you have all of this lovely land to walk around?" His father removed one hand from the wheel to gesture out the window at the gutter situated on the edge of the road.

"Beside, I'm sure they'll have internet at the school," his mother offered as if it were some sort of solace.

Just the mere mention of school made Arthur grateful it was summer, he did not have to concern himself with what sort of teenagers inhabited this forsaken place, he only had worry if he had enough books to last him the next few months.

"Oh, there it is!" The plump woman began to bounce in her seat, a child opening a gift for Christmas, revealing a broken down cottage coated in debilitating vines.

It was one story, antique, crippled on its foundation, all Arthur's family could afford. Flats in the city were expensive, condos and townhouses and cramped bungalows all exceedingly out of their price range, forcing them farther and farther out into the wilderness until they were parked here, in front the abandoned home with Tudor siding and dissipated gardens.

The amount they would spend to get to the city for his father's work would make the bargain shop abode just as costly as any other place, but Arthur kept his mouth bound as he locked the car door shut.

"Oh, how beautiful!" His mother seemed genuinely enthusiastic, bounding toward the house at a waddling pace, kicking up small clouds of arid dust. Arthur was about to follow her, when a hand stopped him, father looking down at him with artless eyes.

"Arthur, I know this is going to be hard, but I want you to try, okay?"

The two sat completely still in the stagnant air, dirt and stretched limbs and the early beginnings of sweat lathered over their bodies. Arthur's father was so concerned, so distressed at the comfort of his son that it made the blonde ponder if he even could be vocal about the true despondency on his mind.

"Dad, it's fine," Arthur smiled, lips taut and chapped, swelling up rivers of blood "I'll be okay, I promise." The man paused for a moment, shifting his weight between the balls of his feet, before nodding, visibly perplexed at the teenagers answer.

"Right, that's my boy," he reached out to pat Arthur's shoulder, making the whole conversation more unpleasant and sticky than it already was. "Well, go on then, go pick your room," Arthur let out a small breath of a laugh, pivoting to the collapsing building.

His feet sunk into the ground as he clutched at his abdomen, nails settling against his blistering skin, scabbed and smooth beneath the cool of cotton.

* * *

It had been a week since they had opened the crevices of dust filled boxes and set up whatever knick knacks could fit into the soggy wood of their home. It still was not home for Arthur, and he fell asleep every night feeling like he was at a camp, or a sleepover, or a hotel with vacuous walls and a toilet that took centuries to flush.

Everyone else seemed to be adjusting fine, like they had never lived anywhere else. His father spoke of work every day, sitting at the dining room table and pinching sugar into his tea. His boss was unreasonable, the floor workers hostile and barely understandable, the buildings windows divulging water onto the conveyor belts and staining his hands rusty. Still, he smiled every time Arthur walked into the room, the boy a thing he had to protect and warrant happiness, even if his foot cramped from driving too long and his neck wrenched forward from bending over a monotonous chain of supply and demand.

His mother spent days planting seeds, crocheting endless lines of kaleidoscope fabric, walking into the fields and coming back again with handfuls of mundane rocks she thought could have any sort of ancient meaning. Arthur thought maybe she was searching for someone to befriend, the only person he had seen in the seven day span of being here an old woman who gave them a pan of brownies that were burnt on the bottom.

She was certainly on his back to make friends, despite not seeing any person of a decent age shuffling through the tall grass terrain.

"It's your job to go out and find them!" She would say over her jam covered biscuits and Arthur had to resist the urge to shove his paperback edition of The Mysterious Stranger into his mouth and gnash until all of his frustration was released.

Arthur was more than content to lock himself inside his room, windows open, breeze flickering the pages of the books he sat waist deep in. Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Thoreau, Plath, those were his friends, the ones he sat inside giggling with until the wee hours of the morning. Outside was not his forte, teenagers were not his forte, making friends was not his forte, but ignoring any sort of unwanted, social responsibility was something he was very, very good at.

It was three in the morning and his eyes burnt, but there were fifty more pages before The Great Gatsby would be finished, so he pinched his distended eyelids and turned the page, freezing midway when his window creaked with a noise outside.

He was not quite sure if he was creating the sound of human activity, his mind concocting some sort of mirage from being separated for so long, or if the noise of scuttling feet and distant whispers was legitimate, and it was getting closer with every passing minute.

Arthur set the book face down on his bed, marking his page and allowing his eyes time away from the endless sentences, toeing his way to the open window, curtains dancing with a draft.

Outside it was a vomit pink, the sky turning yellow and black and red all at once, the night still desperately attempting to keep its deafening hold over the atmosphere. Underneath the early morning film, there were four bodies, one splayed across the ground, the others bent over and howling.

He watched them grip onto one another, falling and rising and falling all over again, throwing things and kicking each other and screaming at the desolate stretch of dirt road in front of them. Arthur leant forward, fingers delving into the rotten wood until it splintered beneath his nails. It was like watching a pack of rabid animals kill their pray, the peacefulness of the night, rupturing it from the inside out, tearing flesh off and sharing it evenly between their wild calls. The way they danced beneath the clouds afire in the sky, arms slicing through the air as they spun and spun around and around, made Arthur wonder if they were trees caught in a vicious wind, if they were even human.

Upon a sudden shout from one of them, they all stopped, turning their rosebud heads to stare at the outline of his frame in the window, close to falling out due to the magnetic sight before him.

"Hey, come here!"

* * *

_Hello._

_I've FINALLY decided to commit to a multi-chaptered story, after many failed attempts. Maybe it's because I have a super amazing beta (who also happens to be one of my best friends) helping me, so I am really excited and eager to write._

_This whole fic will be based off of the song Ride by Lana Del Rey, her monologue for this song is where the first quote comes from. Such a good summertime song._

_So please review, favorite, and enjoy your spring._


	2. Chapter 2

Arthur sat frozen in the puked up light, stifling under their distant gazes. He took a step back, yanking his fingernails out of the waterlogged wood, leaving crescent moons indented into the white paint.

The boy continued to retreat into the coverage of his room, hoping he could swallow into the floorboards and become a broken down piece of furniture, perhaps a head to his uneven bed, or a new chair for his pockmarked desk, this time with all balanced legs, vanishing from the slivering wolf eyes peering in from outside.

"Dude! Come back! Come out here!"

"Yeah, come 'ere!"

Arthur made no move to reply, rooted to the ground, leaves swaying every time a breeze rushed in his window, watching the featureless blobs outside.

"N-No, I'm quite alright!" He called defiantly, not even sure if his voice reached outside, barely falling audible against his own ears, buzzing and crackling like a moth slamming against the arsenic lamp of early morning.

There was a stretched silence, tenuous as a small air bubble, making Arthur want to crawl under the unneeded blankets on his bed and suffocate himself until the sun was fully risen and the embarrassing children had disappeared from outside, leaving him alone to wilt and finish the soggy pages of his abandoned novel.

A few distant flickers of firelight bobbed just above the ground, before a steady stream of the fire ignited an explosion.

A bomber screeched across the countryside, letting out a shrill whining call and dropping crackling sparkles to the ground, sending the group scattering. They howled and danced across the sparkling faeries the deafening firework produced, grappling at each other and tip toeing over the tingling light. Arthur shoved his fingers into his ears, feeling the race of his heartbeat against the tips, cringing at the spinning firecracker outside, sprinting to the window to watch it writhe around the ground and spit more sparks onto the depleted road.

"What the hell are you doing?" Arthur screamed, his words making his jaw vibrate, "You're going to wake my parents!"

"You better get out here or we'll light another one!" A voice warned, reinforcing the claim by flicking the lighter on again, scaring Arthur out of his wits as the firework finally died. He glanced behind himself repeatedly, between the floating menace and the bulwark of his door, stuck in a glitch of indecisiveness. When the fire outside began to move, as if it were going to light up the night all over again, Arthur moved instantly, scrambling to the sill of his window and swinging his feet into the air.

He was so desperate to chew the heads off of whoever lay before him; he had no time to appreciate what he was really doing. He was sneaking out of his house, a stunt pulled by an actual teenager looking for a breath of being, something he had never yearned for in his entire life. The whimpering air did nothing to his tired mind and the tickles of the grass against his bare feet made him jaded, not livid, the whole thing was so toilsome Arthur found no beauty in it at all, the cotton candy sky falling flat upon his eyes.

The group exchanged obnoxious high fives as Arthur came to a halt in front of them, arms crossed, mouth set so hard it became an impenetrable fortress stuffed to the brim with viciously worded weapons.

"Finally! I didn't wanna waste another one of these babies," the tallest of the group shook a store bought firework in his hand, deceiving in its frail size; "I'm Alfred."

Alfred had a smile that old women displayed in pictures, of a sailor that had stolen their love at Coney Island in 1946 with soft ice cream and a warm heart. He captured the peach perfect light and tunneled it through his teeth, blinding you and shocking you and leaving you watch the gaps that littered the small blanch stars.

Arthur was more concerned with what was in his hand though, never bewitched by his charm, and he kept his gaze low as he reached out to snatch the American flag lighter form him, winding his arm back as far as he could before letting it sail through the air and disappear into an empty field across from them.

"There, have fun," the boy skittered away from him, knocked so far out of his drunken mind he sat watching the smaller creature in front of him with jittering hands.

"Dude!" Alfred stumbled toward the wheat field, camouflaging his tall head into the landlocked ocean, down on his hands and knees, sinking into the earth and vanishing from their sight.

His friends seemed to find this change of events the most entertaining thing they had witnessed since disturbing Arthur's placid night with clanging beer bottles and breaching calls. Scrunched tears dripped off their sunburnt faces and left them clutching their stomachs and pulled into balls.

"Oh my _God_, I think I'm in love with you," a girl reached out to wrap her arm around Arthur's much more brittle shoulders, but he pulled away, arms wound tight around his body, taking a few steps back into the titillating dew, watching tall grass ripple as Alfred snuck through it, still searching for his mass produced trinket.

"Yes well, I'm going back to my house now; I suggest you do the same before someone calls the police."

"Oh please, as if there is anyone around to call the cops on us," a haggard boy with pale hair rolled his eyes, rubies with dilated pupils and a bestial stare.

"Well, I always could," Arthur placed his hands on his hips, feeling a withering confidence as the rail thin boy pshawed and took a large gulp from his fading bottle.

"You wouldn't call the cops on us! You're our friend now," the shorter and spritely boy gripped onto his arm, dull nails burrowing into his skin, making Arthur flinch and wobble on his exposed toes.

"I am not-"

"I found it!" Alfred arouse from the field, lighter waving through the air.

"Woop! Sparkler time!"

"Sparklers?" Arthur recoiled as a rough stick was shoved near his face, taking the childish amusement hustled into his hands.

"Yeah, ever used 'em before? Or are you really that boring," Arthur glared as the girl handed more sparklers out to the other two boys, all abandoning their alcohol in exchange for the firecrackers. "I'm Eliza by the way, that's Gil, and that's Feli," she gestured to the two others, each busy with spreading the sparklers between their fingers, fumbling and twisting in the bone lighting.

"Arthur," he muttered under his breath, so no one heard, but Gilbert let out a bark of laughter, looking up with his canine teeth.

"You even have an old man name!"

"Alright, let's light these girls!" Alfred rejoined them all, kindled flame meteoric across his face.

"Me first me first!" Feliciano bounded to the boy who stood like a precipice over him, igniting his sparkler with a grin, jumping back as the fiery sparks spilled into the air, prickling the skin of anyone close enough to touch.

Feliciano let out a cacophonous giggling, taking off down the dirt road with four burning sticks in each hand, leaving a clear, quivering line behind him. The trio watched his exuberance, setting off the brightening sky with captured nebulas and planets in between each of his fingers. Arthur was fascinated at the joyous display, at the bouncing stars that just evaporated once they reached the ground, living no longer than the wind that rushes in a rainstorm.

Alfred came around and set all of their sparklers a light, not hesitating when he stood in front of Arthur, haphazardly letting his lighter bounce in his uneven hold. The smaller boy watched as the simple stick of chemistry set his face radiant, illuminating his night to a wavering and barely visible horizon that was filled with strangers all holding identical beams of light.

He was expecting them all to bolt just like Feliciano had, and thought perhaps he could escape when they were not looking, crawling back into his room, but keeping the sparkler going, because he liked to watch the way it tangled with the strawberry air, sweet and sticky against his chin. But they did not run, they began to walk at a methodical pace, and Arthur kept up with them, feet numbed to the gravel abrading them.

Gilbert and Eliza seemed to be having a slow motion sparkler battle, touching the tips and whirling around to escape the tinkling sprinkles of white. Alfred wandered a few steps ahead of Arthur, flipping his lighter on and off, without a sparkler but seemingly content at his own glow.

"So Artie-"

"It's Arthur."

"Right, just like I said, Artie," he turned to tug at the edges of his lips, knowing fully well just how aggravating he was being, but continued anyway, returning to watch the flame swelling in front of him.

"You just moved here, huh?"

"Yeah, a week ago…" Arthur twisted one of his sparklers into the air, watching it extinguish his view of the sky and billow around his vision, trickling down to leave his nose filled with the stench of chemicals.

"Enjoying it out here so far?"

"No."

Arthur continued to wave the flaming sticks in the air, despite Alfred's eyes entrenched on him, awaiting some sort of other explanation. He found solace in the dissipating rings of light that blinded him and bit the sensitive skin on his hands. The blonde drew circles and suns and moons and secret words into the smoky air, leaving behind a trail of disappearing glitter, growing weaker with every second his firework faded away.

"We were going to pull a prank on you, but when we saw you in the window, we decided maybe we should show you some true country hospitality instead," Arthur looked down from his lit up dance, sparkler on its last leg.

"It wasn't very hospitable of you to force me outside and try to wake my poor parents," Alfred laughed, its own kind of firework.

"Well you weren't very welcoming either! Almost made me lose my best lighter," he pulled out the novelty again and flicked it on, reflecting in his charged blue eyes.

"You deserved it," Arthur began to switch into his comfortable argumentative voice, before stopping, toes coated in velvet dirt. He looked behind himself, eyes scanning the landscape that continued to intensify with every second, the first call of a bird ringing through the air. "I have to get home."

"Nah, come back to Eliza's place! We have tons of Roman candles and more sparklers if you want some," Arthur ground his teeth in embarrassment, not aware his fascination with the facile trifle had been so obvious, feeling a bit ashamed of the enchantment that was dimming in his eyes. What the hell was he doing?

The sparkler died in his hand, leaving nothing but a short stump of wood in his palms.

"No, my parents will know I'm gone, besides, I don't want to," he dropped the valueless sticks to the ground and stepped on them for good measure, making sure they did not spark an unfettered fire, hoping Alfred took this a sign of his unreciprocated emotions of friendship.

"Aw come on, don't be a party pooper!"

"Goodbye," Arthur flicked his hand, suddenly aware of the cutting stones that seemed to imbed themselves into his feet, furrowing his brows as he stalked away, hunched in on himself, cursing and cursing inside until his mind was callous. An idiot he had been, drawn in by pointless vanities and flashing lights, like a child who had seen a candy store and rushed in without a second thought, only to find they had lost their mother, and did not have enough money to buy their favorite sweets. He had seen sparklers many times in his life, he had seen teenagers making fools out of themselves countlessly, and he had seen the young morning sky since he could first articulate the words, but for some reason he had let the intoxicatingly bland mix of it all overwhelm him into traveling down the barren road with unknown aliens that most likely thought he was funny, a joke to their shallow minds, all at his expense.

"Alright, I'll see you later Artie!"

Somehow Arthur sincerely doubted that.

* * *

_Hello._

_Ugh I absolutely hate this chapter. It really just doesn't meet my bar of expectation for myself, which sucks because it's introducing all of the main characters and needs to be exciting and riveting but, instead there's this. I'm really sorry, I tried rewriting it about three times and just couldn't wrap my head around how I wanted to portray it I guess? Writing is all about growing and learning, so hopefully this is some sort of traumatic experience I can take something from._

_Either way, Arthur is such a reluctant character in every aspect. No need to be ashamed of finding tiny things beautiful Arthur, those tend to be the most beautiful things anyway!_

_So please review, favorite, and have a nice day._

_P.S. I know some of the people who keep up with my writing on here follow me on my personal tumblr, so just to let you know I've created a tumblr dedicated just to my writing. I also will take requests (yes even things that aren't USUK or Hetalia) for short little one shots if you would like to have me write something that you haven't seen me do yet. I can also answer any questions you have about anything I have written/am writing/will write, since I know my writing tends to be a bit confusing. Believe me, I know, I'm the one who has to vomit it out._

_Please check it out! mochiwritings . tumblr . com _


	3. Chapter 3

"Arthur, wake up, your friend is here to see you!"

Arthur lifted his head, crusted eyes searching for his twitching alarm clock, cranking out the implausible time of one in the afternoon.

* * *

"I'm so sorry, dear; I don't know why he's sleeping in so late! He's usually up and awake before I am!" The stout woman chuckled, coasting into the kitchen, slippered feet scratching across the tile as Alfred smiled from his seat on the rickety wooden chair.

"It's no biggie! He's probably tired or was up really late or something. My dad says if he doesn't make a super loud noise, I could sleep until dinner!"

Arthur's mother tittered, watching as the teenager leant back on the hind legs of the antiquated furniture, testing the unsteadiness of the creaking wood, flinging his perfectly unblemished head back and forth, back and forth, at danger of cracking open and disgorging out onto the freshly washed floor with one small break.

"A-Ah, excuse me for being such a horrible hostess! Are you hungry? I suppose it's about lunch time! Would you like a sandwich, or how about some salad?" Alfred's eyes lit up like an ocean roofed by thundering fireworks, open and clean next to the swaying drapes.

"Oh, yes m'am!"

The old woman busied herself with slices of prepackaged ham and bruised fruit, slopping large masses of mayonnaise onto the soft wheat bread, ears tingled with the monotonous groans of the rocking chair and birds whistling out of the collapsing kitchen window.

"If you don't mind me asking, how did you meet Arthur? He never mentioned meeting any friends, and well, I was just under the impression he didn't want to!" When she turned, Alfred was gazing out the window next to him, finger tracing the swirls of the wood, unfazed behind his kaleidoscope glasses as he began to smile at the plate of food prepared in her hands.

"Well, when my dad heard someone new had moved in, he told me to come visit. You must've been out, because Arthur was the only one home, and we just sort of chilled then! My friends and I are hanging out today, so I thought I would invite him along so he can meet all of the kids here!"

Arthur's mother was so smitten with his welcome and astonishing words, she did not catch the misleading accent on his tongue, masked by his ravenous mouth swallowing half of the carefully prepared sandwich in one bite, chewing and grinning as she believed his story.

"Oh my, how sweet of you! It is so great to see Arthur making such kind friends, I was so worried…" The woman was finding it hard to contain her excitement, flopping her hands against her thighs, smiling brightly, "Arthur! Get down here!"

"Alright! My God," Arthur emerged into the kitchen, hair in utter disarray, still confused as to why on earth he was awake and why on earth the bothersome boy from last night was sitting at his kitchen table, mouth gaping with lunch meat.

"_This_ is the friend?"

"Don't be rude Arthur! He's come to take you out and have fun," his mother stood up, patting her empty seat, "Now sit down, I'll make you a sandwich before you go."

"I'll take another one too!" Alfred vacuumed the crumbs off of his slender digits, plate completely barren of the once prodigious food that would have satisfied one person easily.

But it did not seem to placate Alfred, his smile urging for more as he handed his plate forward.

"No thanks, I'm not hungry," Arthur curled his lip, feeling the unwashed sweat on his face shiver, "I think I'll go back to bed."

"Oh no you won't Mister; Alfred is going to take you out for some fun today."

"Fun… here?" The venom in Arthur's words made his mother frown, plum lips turned down in disappointment at her sons behavior, but he was much too aggravated and entirely tired of Alfred watching him and waking him up and disrupting his nights and somehow worming his way into his house all in the span of one day to concern himself with proper etiquette.

"Well, it's not exactly here; we're going to the city!" Alfred stood up, stray morsels plummeting to the floor and off of his frayed red t-shirt.

"Hear that Arthur? The city! Remember how you said you wanted to see if there were any good bookstores there?" The light erupting in the woman's eyes was almost sad, as if this was what she found true happiness in anymore, sending her son out with a stranger to capture some sort of exotic experience that she could no longer experience, here, holed away in a decrepit box with too many spider webs.

"Yeah, but not with him," he jerked his head toward Alfred, and the other stared back innocently, bathed in sweltering sunlight.

"Arthur James Kirkland, I raised you to be a better man than this," the once jovial mother had turned into a steaming dragon, rushing forward with a butter knife in hand, slicing the air apart aloft her head, "Now go get changed and don't make this nice boy wait any longer."

"Mom, you don't understand-"

"Don't act like a child with me! Go! Go wash up!" Alfred watched from a distance, completely entertained with their accents, with the way they swung their arms around in an identical way, green eyes barreling into the others mercilessly.

After a few staunch slaps on the arm with the kitchen utensil, Arthur took off, slamming his door and retreating into the nauseating yellowness of his room.

The lady smoothed out her graying hair, brushing it behind her elf ears, turning back with a dewy fresh smile on her thin lips.

"Now then, sit back down, dear, I'll make you another sandwich," she took a hold of Alfred's shoulder, guiding him back to his booby-trap chair, knife clenched in her left hand, "Would you like turkey or ham?"

"Hmmm… both!"

* * *

Arthur hammered the screen door shut behind him, hearing it bound off of its springs, drenched in daylight and the stomach churning sound of Alfred licking his fingers clean next to him.

"Dude, your mom makes ballin' sandwiches," Alfred's thumb was lodged in between his picket fence teeth when they approached a dilapidated van, peeling under the heat, windows tinted to pitch. "Here, lemme see that," he motioned to the water bottle dangling from Arthur's hand, one of the many things his mother sent with him, a care package full of hydrating liquid, bandaids, and enough money to buy one or two novels if they got around to visiting a store with a tolerable book selection.

"You could have just gotten one yourself if you were thirsty," the pale boy handed it over, already feeling his skin sizzle underneath the foreign object looming in the sky as Alfred untwisted the plastic cap and tipped it over, allowing a waterfall to form between the recycled trash and an arid pair of flowers bending under the weight of their imminent death, connecting the two unlike worlds and splattering across the ground.

"What are you doing?" Arthur grappled for his almost hollow bottle, flung around when Alfred flinched his hand away, shaking the remainder of the purified liquid onto the ground in a few drops. "Why would you do that?"

"They looked thirsty," Alfred shrugged, laughing out of the crinkles in his skin as he glanced next to him, blue eyes ablaze, "Follow me."

Arthur did it because he had to, if he ran back to his house like he had the night before, he would be scolded by his mother, bludgeoned with another dull knife. But more importantly, throw a vat of loss onto her hopeful enthusiasm, because all she wanted was for him to feel at home, and for him to enjoy his life in every inch possible, and that was heart wrenching, if not breaking.

He had a headache and a swollen set of forest eyes that watched as Alfred budged open a decrepit door, groaning as it revealed an even shittier interior to the broken vehicle.

Alfred rummaged for a few minutes, before publishing a corked bottle, pulling the loose stopper out with his teeth and using a steady hand to dump the blood liquid into the water bottle, filling it back up with a mysterious elixir that he shook once he had it capped again.

"Here," he handed the sweaty bottle to Arthur, and he took it, watching the thickness roll and float inside.

"What is it?"

"Alcohol, a lot of random stuff, I don't know man," Alfred shrugged, not perturbed under Arthur's spiritless glare.

"You're joking."

"Nope! It looks just like Kool-Aid, and it's a lot less suspicious to drink Kool-Aid out of a water bottle than out of a liquor bottle," the tall boy slid the door shut, eyebrows furrowed as the door stalled under his hands, finally cranking it closed with an haunting boom that echoed over the deserted landscape.

"I'm not going to drink this," Arthur plugged his nose with one hand and held the bottle out with the other, doing his best to look disgusted and hopefully dishearten the iron willed boy, only receiving a door opened in his face.

"Oh well, maybe later. Get in!" Alfred left the door veering in front of him, displaying an open plush seat with various stains across the fabric and trash scattered about the feet.

* * *

They had been driving for fifteen minutes in complete silence, no radio stations to pick up, only white noise, no conversation to grace the humid atmosphere, only heavyweight silence that stuck to Arthur's eyelids and pulled at the blonde lashes frayed out of them.

"We're picking up Lizzie first, since she's the only one who can drive," Alfred spoke, one hand drumming the dark blue exterior of the car and the other leisurely maneuvering the car to the side of the road, in front of a brick ranch, an old couch set outside and waiting for a new home.

"What do you mean? Can't you drive?" Arthur watched as the tan boy chugged the gear to park and honked repeatedly, irking birds from their resting place and making grass freeze in surprise.

"Well, I have my permit."

"Hold on, pause, you only have your permit?" Arthur went from watching as a girl exited the house next to them swiftly to gaping at Alfred, eyes set so hard in a conniption his pupils shuddered.

"Yeah."

"You drove me here illegally?"

"How else were we supposed to get here?" Alfred shrugged, leaning over to roll Arthur's window down for him as Eliza propped her hands against the van, fingers splayed and painted violet.

"Hey Lizzie!"

"Hey! You got this kid to come along?" She leant into the window, masking Arthur's face in strawberry scented strands of caramel hair, leaking girlish perfume into the once untainted interior.

"Haha, yeah! Dude his mom made me like three sandwiches."

"Were they good?"

"Awesome!"

"I want one-"

"Stop!" The two halted in their inane conversation, glancing over to Arthur, locks of hair stinging his eyes, "I want out."

"What? Why?" Alfred bent back to stare incredulously at Arthur, blue disks wide.

"Because you drove me here without a license, there's alcohol and God knows what else in the backseat, I'm either going to die, or get in serious trouble, and I'd like to just get out of this before my life is ruined."

There was an obnoxious snapping in his face as Eliza got his attention, face unharmed and pale, breaths away from him, "Hey, Her Majesty, get in the backseat, Gil always gets shotgun."

Arthur sat numb as the door opened next to him and Alfred crawled over the arm rest, into the back seat, motioning for him to follow, completely ignored, his words nothing other than a crackly school announcement that sat listlessly against the ears of slumbering teenagers, heads tucked inside their arms, not worried with whatever pleas the principal was crying out.

* * *

The next house they stopped at was a soggy trailer, vines sinking it into the earth, Feliciano and Gilbert in a short race to the car, beaming and skipping together. Feliciano slid the back door open, rust abrading his soft hands, a wide grin set on his face.

"Hey Alfred! Oh, Arthur's coming with us too? How cool!" He wiggled into the car, forcing Alfred to the middle of the confined, connected seats, ignoring the whole other row behind them to instead flash thumbs up at the smaller boy.

"Hey, it's sparkler kid!" Gilbert turned around, neglecting the correction Arthur threw at him to instead focus on Alfred, cardinal eyes singeing the air, "What do you got Alfie?"

"Well," Alfred propped himself up on his knees and flung half of himself into the back seat, rummaging and creating an upheaval as he rooted around in the collection of useless debris, legs tweaking into Arthur's face and causing the boy to push closer to the window than he had before, pulled into himself so tight his chest punctured holes in his heart.

"I have strawberry vodka, Blue Moon, some leftover Mike's, and… Oh! Check this out," he wheeled back around, brandishing the sanguine fluid he had poured into the water bottle sloshing at Arthur's side as the car began to bump over the patchy dirt road, "My dad came home from working the bar the other day and he learned how to make this fruity girly drink, but if you add a few shots to it, it's literally amazing."

"Gimme," Eliza reached behind herself, wiggling her worm fingers, eyes still cemented to the road and flickering across the panorama. Arthur watched in disbelief as Alfred set the whole glass bottle in her hand, head wheeling.

"You're drinking that and driving?" Feliciano popped a cap off of a Hard Lemonade and set his head against the window, unfazed by the horrid sight Arthur was witnessing, eyes focused on a wild blue patch of flowers hurtling by.

"Relax blondie, I'm an immaculate driver," Eliza took a long chug out of the bottle before passing it to Gilbert, who abandoned it in favor of a lukewarm can of beer, rolling down the window to toss his discarded tab into the unsullied wilderness. Arthur gripped so hard to his sides he made welts, tiny lunes in his ribcage that displayed the anxiety and fear rising in his throat. It was one thing to be in a car with reckless teenagers, but another thing for them to be drinking, on a completely open road, no speed limit, no barriers, an endless stretch of eighty miles per hour that brought him three seconds closer to death or extreme mangling.

"Dude, seriously, it'll be fine," Alfred said lowly, picking up on the tightness of Arthur's tendons, smirking down at him, a feature of his face that never seemed to vanish, just like his nose, or the sky of his eyes, "Eliza's great at driving, we do this all the time."

"No, it is obviously not okay!" His whisper was harsh, and Alfred tilted his head to listen. "Do you realize how dangerous this is? We aren't even legal anyway! Look at Feliciano; he can't even be older than fourteen and you already have him acting like a delinquent with you."

"There aren't a lot of people to hang out with in the middle of nowhere," Alfred offered logically, doing nothing to qualm Arthur's fretting and furrowing, the shorter boy huffing away to silently watch the trees skip by outside.

Eliza snapped the radio on, receiving white noise and small twitters of conversation, a news reel to keep them entertained for the long drive ahead.

"A subway malfunction in New York City leaves… Authorit… doing well…"

"Man, you know what I want to do?" No one answered as Gilbert twisted his arms behind his head, twiddling his fingers, "Be arrested by the NYPD."

"You're an idiot," Eliza said blandly, swerving slightly to miss a bloated raccoon lifeless on the side of the road, expired and collecting maggots and stenches by the ton, describing the knot in Arthur's stomach with its lolling, swelling tongue and spewing intestines.

"New York City would be very fun to visit though," Feliciano rattled as the car rumbled over a patch of spitting gravel.

"It's not that great," Arthur muttered, and the group turned to look at him, Eliza out of the film of her green eyes.

"You've been there?"

Arthur looked over, startled they were all focused on him, teeth clamping the inside of his sore cheek, "Yeah, I used to live by there when I first moved to America."

"Dude, woah! How cool was it? What was it like?" Alfred reposed forward, sucking in sunlight with his glaring glasses.

"Uh… it was like a city, really. Dirty, crowded, much prettier at night than during the day…" No one was contented with this answer however, and Arthur crawled the junctions of his mind, trying to conjure up the fuzzy pictures he held about the now distant and meaningless place, "They did have a lot to do though, like cafes, and nice bookstores. Everyone road bikes everywhere, and there was graffiti on the subways. It was best during Christmastime though, with all the lights, and the giant tree was breathtaking. They had horses that could pull you in carriages and a zoo with polar bears and penguins… But I don't remember that much…"

"Wow," Alfred ran his gaze over Arthur's distressed face, so wonderstruck, impressed by his worldly knowledge of a place not even holding any value to the tiny Brit, his fingertips simmering bright red under the uncomfortable stare.

"It sounds so cool! Eliza, tell us about the time you went to Dallas again!" Feliciano erupted, and the older girl shook her hair around her shoulders.

"Oh God, it was so hot."

* * *

They murmured stories the rest of the ride, and while Arthur found their country-like fascination with anything he thought mundane and the radio stations filled only with static and outdated pop songs mildly confusing, he learnt in a single moment that they were much smarter than they appeared, and that they apparently knew what they were doing, because as the alcohol stash dwindled and the stories escalated in volume and rowdy laughter, Eliza remained a perfect driver, and their faces lit up as red evening flooded their pupils. This was their fun, and they seemed to be experiencing it so much more than Arthur was, not speaking after his explanation of New York City, never once touching the concoction in the bottle at his side, deathly afraid, but intrigued, and lonely as Alfred's shoulder pressed into his.

"Look! Look! There it is!" Feliciano smashed his face against the window, rubbing moist condensation across the glass, eyes fixated on the approaching skyline, "There's the city!"

* * *

_Hello._

_Okay DISCLAIMER I don't endorse drinking and driving it is extremely horrible and takes lives and just because I write some of my favorite characters doing it doesn't mean it is at all okay! In fact these few kids are going to do a lot of things that are simply not okay but hey that is being a teenager man._

_Really any chapter where the five of them are driving is going to be influenced by the song Tongue Tied by Grouplove. It's just a great song to drive to and drink to and yeah, a good summer song._

_ONE LAST THING a big thanks to my beta Megan again for helping me because I really hate commas and ending sentences and she is very good at making me realize that. I LOVE YOU._

_So please review, favorite, and enjoy the nice weather (if it's nice where you live like it is here)._


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